Hello Gleeks! How was your week? Did knowing Glee was airing at the end of the week keep you going? Because it sure does for me! The newest episode, 6×04 was called ‘The Hurt Locker Part 1’ and it was…. Interesting…. It was super weird. Right up there with ‘The Puppet Master’ and ‘Previously Unaired Christmas’. Though it has some humor and the songs weren’t too bad, the weird plot really confused me. I give the episode a 2 out of 5. Here’s what happened….

The good news is that in that ‘Here’s What You Missed’ bit, they acknowledged that ND still needs 12 members to perform.

It begins with Will at McKinley eating a friendly lunch with Sue. While Will happily yaps about things, Sue is not paying attention. Will eventually leaves, but he leaves a fork on the table. And Sue flips. That plastic fork triggers some rage in her and she refuses to throw it out for him. So Sue brings Becky on a little trip to a storage locker. Sue mentions to Becky that she has plan for retirement, but before she does, she has some last tasks to complete. She opens one of the units, which she calls her ‘Hurt Locker’ because it is filled with a bunch of weird things that Sue uses to antagonize and harass people. She has a whole bulletin board dedicated to the Glee club, charting every milestone any of them has ever had. In a voice over, Sue vows to take down Will and even Rachel (she pins Will’s forgotten fork to the board). Before they leave, Sue makes Becky look away and Sue then opens a hidden room. In it is a literal shrine dedicated to Klaine.

Because for some reason, Sue ships them. Hard-core. It’s weird. Still in voice over, Sue says that she is adamant on getting the back together so she can be a flower girl at their wedding. If your face is in a look of pure confusion, then you are not alone. Also, does anyone want to talk about how Sue has a picture of Klaine’s first kiss that HAPPENED IN AN EMPTY DALTON ROOM???? Step one of Sue’s plan is talking to Kurt in her office. But Kurt says he doesn’t want to get back with Blaine (lies!) and doesn’t want Sue meddling, but it’s too late because she’s already secretly set up an invitational between ND, the Warblers and VA.

At a practice for this invitational (are those things?), Rachel talks to Will and says that her team isn’t ready at all, and they won’t be mentally if they see VA in all their glory. SO she asks Will to take it easy on them so to help ND. Rachel pulls the pity card (nice tactic) and says that ND is important and he should help it survive. During this whole conversation, Sue is flying a camera drone and is filming it all secretly. Will goes backstage and sees the two old plaques of Lillian Adler and, of course, Finn. At the sight of that, he comes to his decision to take it easy on ND. He tells VA that they going to do a new routine and shake it up a bit. BTW, the lead of the group, whose name I don’t know, is played by Max George, one of the members of the band The Wanted.

In the locker room, Sue corners Sam and ends up hypnotizing him. Because…why not? In the hypnosis, Sue says that at the mention of a few certain words he’ll fall in love with Rachel, but when they kiss, he’ll forget everything.

On the stage, when the Warblers are rehearsing, Blaine tells Kurt and Rachel that the Warblers are taking this seriously and even when Kurt and Rachel ask him to take it easy as well, he refuses. Right then, Blaine gets a text from Dave saying that there’s an intruder in their new shared apartment. So Blaine, Rachel and Kurt hurry over. They find a super-scared Dave standing on a chair in a panic. He screeches (literally) that it is in the bedroom, so the three of them go in to see a live bear sitting on the bed.

Um….what? Dave finds a bear in his house and panics and calls Blaine? Call an exterminator! Call the news! Don’t call Blaine. What can Blaine do? Anyways, Kurt says he’s pretty sure he knows how the bear got there. I have to say, it is ironic how Dave is called ‘Big Bear’ in his gay community and here he is, about to cry at the sight of a real bear. I mean, I’d cry too, but still….

Later, at Breadstix, Sam and Rachel are hanging and eating dinner. They discuss the transition they both made from the busy NYC life to their old Lima life. In her free time, Rachel watches old Patti Lupone videos, while Sam has taken up glass blowing. Rachel says that she wants to learn how to play the piano. ‘Play the piano’ was one of the hypnosis trigger words from Sue. So as of then, Sam is in love with Rachel. Rachel takes that time to thank Sam for being so cool and casual as she hasn’t been alone with a guy in a while.

Kurt knows it was Sue who put the bear in Dave and Blaine’s apartment, and she admits it, saying that she heard that Dave is attracted to bears. Kurt says that he’s moving on as he has a date with a guy from the internet. He implores that she leave him and Blaine alone.

On the stage, Blaine is teaching Sam and Rachel some basic piano notes. Sam says that he would have gotten Brad the piano guy to do it, but he caught Brad making a scrapbook of women’s feet. Oh, Brad. He’s so weird, but we haven’t seen him in ages, so it was kind of nice to see him back. Anyways, Sue interrupts their lesson and demands that they leave the stage. They unhappily do, and Sue begins to sing ‘Bitch’. During the song, we see her causing her normal havoc on the school and its unsuspecting students. Why she’s doing it all, we don’t know. What I don’t understand is how she manages to keep her job as principal and act like that…

Later, Blaine and Dave are on a date at Breadstix when several big bearded men come up, recognizing Dave as old boyfriends. Thanks to Sue, who shows up, she’s gotten all of Dave’s old exes together in one room. She also did some research and found that Blaine and Dave are third cousins. Cool.

In the choir room, Rachel is practicing the piano and getting really frustrated. Sam comes in and when Rachel says she wants to quit, he calms her own and helps her play the piano on his hands. It’d be cute if it wasn’t so weird. Samchel is just….odd.

With that footage of Rachel convincing Will to go easy on ND, Sue goes to Carmell and meets with the principal. But…the principal is the sister of Figgins. There’s a stunning resemblance (it’s just Iqbal in a blonde wig). Either way, Sue presents the footage.

Kurt and Rachel meet with their four ND members. They keep positive and say that even with their low members, they’ll do fine at the invitational. But they all know the truth: they’re kinda screwed.

Sue’s footage did some damage apparently, because Will storms into Sue’s office and he is pissed. He can’t believe that she did that when they were friends now. But guess what? Friend isn’t a word in Sue’s vocabulary. She insists that she has always, always HATED him. She says that he is an awful teacher and she will do everything she can to destroy him. But he heard about her retirement plans so he vows to work to keep the Glee club going after she leaves the school.

Blaine meets with Kurt in the auditorium, just to vent apparently. Blaine tells him of what Sue did to he and Dave, and Kurt assures him that it’s probably all fake. Blaine then says that he’s glad they agreed to be friends. Kurt informs him that he has a date tonight. Blaine pretends to be happy and supportive, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. They’re so bad at lying to each other.

In the choir room, Rachel is practicing again when Sam comes in, complimenting her growing abilities. He sits down on the bench next to her and they start to play ‘A Thousand Miles’ and sing along. They react the real music video where they play the piano on the back of a moving flatbed truck.

The song is cute and they sing it well and ew am I shipping Samchel? No. No. It’s too weird. I mean, if I didn’t know both their pasts and was just seeing them for the first time now then maybe. But no. Unfortunately for me and for anyone else who isn’t aboard this ship (most everyone, I’d assume), after song ends, they kiss. Weird. However, as per Sue’s hypnosis, due to that kiss, Sam doesn’t remember any of it.

The next day, Rachel finds Sam in the halls and says that she’s been thinking a lot about what happened. Sam, though doesn’t remember it. She then asks him out on a coffee date, but he turns her down as he is still in love with Mercedes (yay, good). Rachel looks kind of sad, but I think we can all agree that it’s for the best.

With that part of the hypnosis down, Sue finds Sam again and this time, hypnotises him to go against Will now and tells him to go steal his mail.

Kurt’s at Breadstix waiting for his new date. An older man comes up to him and introduces himself as Walter. Yup, Kurt unknowingly has a date with a fifty-something year old man. Walter explains that he’s young at heart and really felt a connection to Kurt, despite the fact that he was previously married to a woman and has kids about Kurt’s age. Kurt is concerned, but when Walter proposes the option to just start as friends, he agrees. Why, Kurt, why? What good could come out of that?

So Sam is outside Will’s place and is in the process of stealing his mail when Will pulls up and questions him. Sam says it was Rachel’s idea and he goes on to say that she is mad at Will and is going to take him down so VA will fail too. Will believes Sam and so his agreement to go easy on ND is off. He tells VA to dominate the invitational. VA goes on stage and, as per VA norms, they are perfectly in sync and with killer vocals.

They first sing ‘Rock Lobster’ and then break into ‘Whip It’ and even manage to change costumes in a second. Kurt and Rachel are watching this with looks of confusion and anger. When the performance is over, they and ND clap but none of them look happy about it.

And that’s the end. ‘The Hurt Locker Part 2’ obviously comes next. But man, what a weird episode, eh? I mean, Sue is just so out of character with the whole Klaine thing (although I read that it was to maybe mock real Klaine fans?) and the hypnosis was just strange. Not Glee’s best. Hopefully part two is better…. In terms of Samchel, I’m not sure what to say. I mean, they were oddly cute this episode, but is Sam right for her? Are they the new endgame? Since Finn’s death, Rachel hasn’t been with anyone, but will Glee end that way? I wrote a post on that ages ago if you want to read it.

Speaking of part two, here is the promo for 6×05 ‘The Hurt Locker Part 2’.So Sue is still on the Klaine hunt. Part of me is glad because I want them back together more than anything, but another part of me is still weirded out by Sue. So she traps them in a fake elevator where (spoiler!) things get awkward and hot. Not going to lie, I am kind of excited for the elevator bits…. 😉 Kitty is back, so yay! And it seems like we’ll still be getting a bit more hypnosis and strange Samchel parts….idk hopefully this episode is better than part one.

What are your thoughts on the episode? Did you like it, or are you just as confused and upset as me? Let me know, and see you soon with the songs! 🙂

Even though I don’t love them together (Sam is sweet, of course, but they don’t have much in common) I’m glad that you got a chance to see them together even for a little bit after being such a long-time shipper.